


ep1.955tranger5.mov

by Meu



Category: Mr Robot
Genre: Mr Robot - Freeform, OC, Original Female Character - Freeform, Platonic Relationships, Spoilers, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, first fic, formatting is weird, suicidal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 07:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5577034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meu/pseuds/Meu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>elliot wants to end it permanently. but then a mysterious grl shows up at his doorstep. whats her story? and how can it save elliot?</p>
            </blockquote>





	ep1.955tranger5.mov

His legs dangled precariously, swinging dozens of feet above a concrete sidewalk as his fingers gripped the edge so tightly his knuckles threatened to burst through the skin. Clad in all black as usual, he blended in with the 3 A.M. darkness that cloaked the neighbourhood. Invisible, like always. 

His corner of the city that never slept was fast asleep. Not one cricket chirped. The only sound Elliot heard was the crashing of his heart and the blood roaring in his ears and above all that voice, that part of his brain he had tried to keep locked down with morphine, saying (do it jump off let go no one cares no one ever did you’re worthless your father hated you when he died your mother never loved you you’re insane you’re a schizo he’s not real he was never real she was your sister your goddamn sister and you forgot her you forgot them no one loves you people use you you’re a pawn you’re a mental case you’re)

“Don’t.”

Elliot froze, the voice in his head going suddenly, eerily silent as if the new one had stopped it, overpowered it. It came from underneath him. As he looked down to look for the source he vaguely realised that he’d been slowly slipping off the sill and instinctively he moved back, sweating with the sudden adrenaline.

The person that had spoken stood below him, illuminated in the dim flickering glow of a nearby street light. They were too far away to him to make out their features, even when they stepped forward cautiously, their face upturned towards him. 

“Please, don’t do it.”

The voice was high-pitched and lilting, yet loud and clear—the speaker was a girl, no doubt. He said nothing, but studied her silhouette further, noting her unusually small, slight frame.

(What the hell is a girl who looks like that doing out here in the middle of the night?) he wondered weakly, and then, bitterly: (she probably isn’t real either.)

He became dimly aware that she was talking to him  
.  
“…and I promise it’ll all get better soon. Okay? Now just please get back inside your apartment and maybe we can talk about—“

A searing stab of rage speared Elliot, cutting through his numbness so abruptly it startled him.

“What the fuck do you know about me? About what I’m going through?” he spat, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, scorching his tongue as they left it, like white hot arrows that he directed at this stranger, this hopelessly stupid, naïve girl who thought she could somehow magically help him.

She didn’t flinch. 

“I don’t. I know absolutely nothing about you or what your life is like or what’s driving you to jump off this building. But I’d like to help. Just let me—”

Her innocence burned him, her childish belief that she could save him from himself made him want to vomit, whether from rage, disgust, disbelief or something else, he couldn’t tell. 

“It’s not worth it,” she tried.

(Bullshit. It’s all some cliché shit she learned in some movie. I should just jump. Right now. I should just let pieces of me splatter all over her and the ground and the walls. I should just teach her that life isn’t a fairy tale, there isn’t a happily ever after, she can’t help a person set on killing himself, she can’t, she can’t…)

It was that part of his brain again. The dark thoughts that he’d given up on suppressing. Taking him over, fogging his conscience, letting a red haze settle over his vision. But still he remained on the sill, his fingers fastened to it, and he knew then that he couldn’t jump if he tried. The moment was over. The shred of humanity he felt was left in him wouldn’t let him end it all, not in front of this girl who had her whole life in front of her and who was trying, albeit vainly, to help him.

Something boiled in him, a bubbling, swirling vortex of emotion that rose in his stomach like bile and for a moment he was sure he would throw up. But instead a ragged, gasping sob pried apart his lips and tore itself from his throat, and he realised he was shaking, violently. The girl spoke in soothing tones, like she was coaxing a frightened animal—(I am, I’m an animal trapped in a cage I built myself.)

“Now, I want you to climb back inside your apartment. Can you do that for me?” 

At first, he didn’t move. His mind was at war with itself, different parts of his brain attacking, ripping, tearing at each other viciously and mercilessly, like rabid dogs. Hot tears drooled from his eyes, scalding his face, and all the while he shook and gasped helplessly as he tried to regain control. But the girl, surprisingly, stayed quiet beneath him and for some reason the fact that she was there, watching, silently encouraging him, allowed the pounding in his skull to subside slightly, enough for him to slowly, mechanically pull himself back through his window one leg at a time.

“Hey.”

The voice came from behind him again and he stilled, her tone forcing him to turn and look back down at her. The unnatural calmness and steadiness in her voice was gone and now there was a tremor in it, a crack that he knew meant she had felt what he had, that she had been just as terrified. 

“You really…you really shouldn’t be alone right now,” she said, sounding professional again with only a hint of a waver in her voice to indicate otherwise. 

(She doesn’t want to set me off again by letting on that she’s scared, too.)

Elliot didn’t know what came over him but as he looked down at the small stranger with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, trying so hard to be brave for him, he found himself nodding.

“Come in,” he said, and even to his own ears his voice was hollow. Robotic. (God, I don’t even want to think of that word right now.) He heard himself reciting his apartment number and then he jerked back from the window abruptly without seeing if the girl was going to come inside. He clutched his head with a low moan of horror.

(What am I doing? What’s wrong with me? I’m Elliot Alderson. I’m alone. I’m always alone. People who help me, who get close to me, look what happens to them! Look at Shayla!)

But it was too late. Flipper, who’d been dozing near the front door, woke up suddenly, her ears pricked and alert, and began to bark. A soft, tentative knock made him flinch violently away from the door, bumping into the still open window. He turned around and clamped both his hands onto the sill, trying to slow his breathing, but nausea burbled up and he retched and watched the contents of his stomach stain the walls and the sidewalk below—(like I would’ve done a few minutes ago…like I should’ve done)—but he took a deep shuddering breath and closed the window and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, the terrible acidic aftertaste of bile singing the hair in his nose.

The knock came again, more urgent this time—(she probably thinks I offed myself while she wasn’t looking)—and with a grim set to his jaw Elliot flipped on the light switch and, before he could change his mind, crossed the room in three strides and flung open the door.

His hand immediately dropped to his side at the sight of the person who greeted him in the doorway. He could do nothing but stare, stunned into silence, the words he’d been planning to say evaporating on his lips. 

He’d thought whoever this stranger was looked small since she was standing a few stories beneath him. But this girl—(that’s just what she is, a girl, a child)—that stood before him now, that had stopped him from ending it right on the sidewalk outside his house couldn’t have been older than her mid-teens. 

(Why the ever loving fuck is a kid wandering New York at three in the goddamn morning? What is she doing going around rescuing strangers from plummeting to their deaths?) 

His mind was so full of questions, pounding with them, aching with them, that he barely even noticed that the girl had let herself in and was watching him, her expression wary but somehow expectant at the same time. He couldn’t get his slack jaw to work, to form words, but his brain worked double time as his gaze roved over her.

Her cheeks were almost concave, giving her young features an unnaturally haggard appearance. Her forehead and temples were speckled with acne and small scars, yet her skin lacked the dewy glow most teenagers possessed, appearing ashen and grimy instead. Her nose was small and upturned, her mouth full but her lips dry and cracked. She was bundled up in a threadbare winter coat and scarf, her hands tucked underneath her armpits and her limp black hair spilling from beneath her hideous red-and-white beanie (the white was more of a brown at this point). The faded jeans she wore revealed legs so scrawny they barely seemed to hold her up.

Elliot had known she was homeless the moment he set eyes on the bedraggled little character but he was still immensely baffled as to how she’d survived so long in the merciless concrete jungle. To his knowledge, a girl like her was more likely to survive in an actual jungle.

She spoke then. “Look, I get that this is probably super confusing for you, but let me be straight with you: you’re suicidal and I’m freezing from the cold, so why don’t we just sit down and get cups of tea or coffee or something if you have it and just talk, if that’s okay with you?”

Her manner was bold and straightforward but she talked rapidly, with her eyes that looked unnaturally large in her sallow face fixed on him the whole time, as if afraid he would turn her away. 

And again Elliot felt his head nod without his brain’s consent but when he watched the girl’s face soften in relief, the hint of a smile touching the corners of her lips, he could do nothing but shut the door after her as she made her way through his apartment, completely unafraid of being alone in it with a strange man at a time where everything was asleep.

“So?” she said presently, turning to face him. He looked up, and she was looking at him like she’d just asked a question and was waiting for him to answer. He furrowed his eyebrows slightly and in response she actually rolled her eyes.

“So, do you have any tea or coffee?” 

“Oh…uh…cupboard.”

She waited for him to offer a bit more information, but his unhelpful brain wasn’t providing her with anything else, still working to process the situation, so she just sighed and moved over to the kitchen. Elliot sat down heavily on the sofa, listening to the sound of her rifling through his stuff. In no time at all, or so it seemed to him, she had two cups of the steaming drink ready, even balancing it on a tray with a jug of milk and a pot of sugar.

(She’s not real. She’s definitely not real. She can’t be.)

“I’m not sure how you like it,” she said by way of explanation, setting it down in front of him and picking up her own cup, the dark liquid inside it already dramatically lightened with milk. Elliot didn’t touch his cup, instead staring at her as she casually sipped away as if this were a light afternoon conversation between friends, her chapped hands clasping gratefully around the hot ceramic mug. She looked over at him, her high, arched eyebrows disappearing under her beanie. 

“I’d recommend you drink it. It’s pretty much scalding, but I was freezing my ass off tonight and God knows how long you were sitting out there—”

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Elliot snapped, cutting her off. 

She paused and gave him a fleeting glance before shrugging.

“I happened to be walking around outside your building. I saw you edging off the sill on the top floor. I stopped and I did what anyone with a beating heart would do and I tried to help you. Still am, actually.”

He just gaped, once again rendered speechless.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said quietly, swirling the tea in her mug and never looking up from it. “This kid comes out of nowhere and tries to play hero by preventing me from killing myself. Then she waltzes into my home and sits down and makes a cup of tea while trying to make small talk with me. She has no idea what she’s getting herself into. She knows fuck all about suicide. About me. About how dangerous it is to go prancing around New York at an ungodly hour.”

She levelled her gaze to meet his and Elliot held it, and for the first time he noticed the cavernous dark circles under her eyes, the way the dark chocolate irises kindled and snapped in the dim light, the way the lashes practically brushed her cheeks when she blinked. Most of all he realised that her eyes weren’t that of a young girl, bright and eager and completely clueless about what lay ahead, but they were weathered, hardened. They held knowledge far past their owner’s years, they were putting up walls that he couldn’t see over.

To anyone else, her eyes would’ve looked completely normal—quite pretty, but nothing spectacular otherwise. But Elliot recognised the sign of someone who knew very well how cruel the world could be and was, someone who’d been broken and rebuilt, moulded by that awareness. He knew them immediately, because he’d seen the same eyes far too many times in the mirror. 

And now those eyes held his in silent acknowledgement and he knew that she’d seen it in him, too. (It would be a given, anyway, since I just tried to jump off the top floor of an apartment building.)

She looked down and sipped at her tea again. 

“I know what it’s like to want to die. Thing is, you don’t really want to die. You just want to escape, and you feel like you have no other option.” She smirked humourlessly and gestured to herself. “No other good option, anyway. I only found that out after years of therapy.”

(Years…? How old is this kid?) was Elliot’s first fuzzy thought, and then his throat closed up because everything she had said was true and judging by the look she gave him she knew it.

“I also know how it feels to lose someone to suicide. I was nine years old when my sister OD’d.” Her lips twisted and her voice cracked imperceptibly as she said it. 

(Why is she telling me this? I’m no one to her.)

“Her name was Kristen, and she was at her boyfriend’s house when she called our landline six years, two months and eight days ago. It was a Tuesday, and it was the warmest evening I can recall from that summer. Weird how you remember the most mundane things about a memorable day, huh?” 

She spoke to him, but she spoke as though she were in a trance, not looking at him, her hands gripping her cup loosely.  
“She called my parents’ house and I was the one to receive it. All she told me when I answered the phone was that she loved me and she asked me to tell my parents the same. She said she was sorry. Then she hung up. And you know what I did? I fucking put the phone down and kept on watching TV.” 

Her gaze darted from his and Elliot felt a jolt run through him when he noticed that her eyes were brimming with hot, angry tears. He suddenly, inexplicably remembered Fernando Vera— _nah, man. You don’t know true hate until you hate yourself._

She took a breath and doggedly continued. (Why is she so persistent? What is she getting out of telling this to a complete stranger? Clearly, she’s in pain.)

But he listened. “I thought…I thought maybe she was apologising because she got into another fight with my mom—she was at that age, you know. So I…I didn’t think it was too important. About ten minutes later my mom walks into the room and asks who called. I said it was Kristen and sort of offhandedly recited what she asked me to say. I will never forget the look on her face when I told her. It was like all the colour was sucked out of it and her eyes were…”

She trailed off and her eyes were glazed and distant, barely even in the room anymore, and Elliot knew that she was reliving that day.  
“I…are you…?” he stammered, trying to catch her eyes. Her eyelids sort of fluttered and her gaze snapped back to him, her lips parting slightly as if in surprise. 

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, looking away again. “Looking back, I realise why she looked so horrified. Kristen had been displaying the signs, you know, lethargy, lack of interest in everything, no appetite, snappy, mean. Textbook depression. Chronic, actually. So…my mom tried to call her back. And she called. And called. Kristen never picked up. Dad called the police. Assholes arrived just after she died.”

She sucked in a sudden sharp breath as the cup tilted in her slack grasp, splashing her fingers with hot tea. Cursing, she slammed it down onto the tray and wiped her hands on her coat. Elliot could do nothing but watch her, too numb to even offer her a napkin. 

“What I’m trying to say,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “is that losing someone to suicide fucks you up. No one…especially no child should have gone through what I did. You can’t sit here and tell me that no one would care if you jumped. Everyone has someone. If not a friend or a close family member, then how about the cashier who smiles at you when they ring you up? A co-worker? Acquaintance? Hell, even your goddamn dog would be affected. Who’d feed her?”

(Angela. Gideon. Darlene. Mobely. Romero. Trenton. Qwerty and Flipper.)

She watched him carefully, slowly taking her burnt hands out of her pockets. Elliot still hadn’t regained his power of speech so he only watched her, his eyes painfully dry as he became aware that he hadn’t blinked in minutes. 

“Say you did jump,” she said, unperturbed by his wide, searching eyes that flicked over her face incessantly, still trying to figure out whether or not she was real. “What would that have done to those people who you care about? Who care about you?”

She stood up and nonchalantly walked into the kitchen as she spoke, and a moment later he heard the cold water running over the angry red skin on her hands. Yet even over the sound of the gushing faucet he heard her voice loud and clear.

“Five years of therapy. They spent the whole time trying to convince me that it wasn’t my fault Kristen had died. I couldn’t have known. I had every reason to believe it was a normal call. But you know what? Even though some little part of me knew they were right, I spent most of those five years thinking I’d killed my sister.”

She moved back into the room, sat down with a meditative look on her face as she gingerly wrapped her hands in damp paper towels. 

“And I thought I had a perfect reason to. Do you know why I didn’t tell my parents immediately? It was because I was mad at her. I was pissed off because she didn’t play with me as much as she used to. _Krissy was grumpy all the time. She yelled at me when I came into her room._ I was mad at a clinically depressed seventeen year old girl for not devoting all her time and attention to me. But we used to be so close.” 

Her nostrils flared and her chin wobbled despite her valiant attempts at keeping it still. And deep down in the back of Elliot’s mind a thought bubbled to the surface, lurking there, unwanted.

(I wonder if she accidentally poured the scotch instead of the tea.)

Immediately he felt ashamed of himself for thinking something like that and instead focused on her facial expression, the way she was struggling to keep it neutral. 

(She still blames herself. She still thinks that if she hadn’t made the childish decision to hold off telling her parents, her sister would somehow still be alive.)

And he watched her fiddle with her teacup and another realisation came to him, hit him so hard that he almost visibly flinched.

 _“I know what it’s like to want to die,”_ she had said. 

(Years of intensive therapy after your older sister kills herself would do that to you. But…being suicidal doesn’t always mean slashing your wrists and jumping off tall buildings at any given chance. It’s when you don’t care about the value of your life, walking into situations that no sane person would even consider, ones that could mean risking your life, without a second thought. It could be crossing a busy highway without looking twice. Going double the speed limit on a deserted road for no reason other than that you simply felt like doing it. Not explicitly intending to die, but not giving a shit if you were to die. Because you have nothing to lose.

Maybe…no, it could definitely be wandering into a strange man’s house without a second thought. Making yourself tea and chatting to him about your life at almost four in the morning, at a time where he could easily murder you, a homeless girl, (one of thousands, a mere statistic) if he wanted to and no one would know any better. A mentally unstable man, too, one who’d just tried to kill himself minutes ago. 

Christ, it’s a case of the blind leading the blind here.)

The girl looked completely unaware of his groundbreaking discovery as she put down the cup, still half-full of cooling tea.

“I think a big part of it was my parents,” she finally confessed. “After the funeral—after they stopped looking shellshocked and started to come to terms with what had happened, they started to look at me differently. Treat me differently. They didn’t get all overprotective since I was their last child or some bullshit, they looked at me like I was their daughter’s killer who was forcing them to let me live under their roof. And let me tell you, that hurt. Almost worse than the actual death. I blamed myself already, to a degree. And they never said it outright, but I knew they blamed me, too. Over the years, that built up. Completely overruled any help the psychiatrist managed to give me. It was a toxic place for anyone, but to an impressionable adolescent girl, well.” She paused, flexed her fingers cautiously, absently. “I ran away last year. It wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, honestly. To me, it was better than what I had before.”

(She’s lying. She’s trying to convince herself.)

“Besides, I knew all the ins and outs of the area. Kristen and I used to run riot all over the city and make little maps and pretend we were explorers. So nothing…particularly bad has happened to me yet. Cops haven’t caught me, either, and hell if I let them take me back to that shithole of a house.” 

She caught herself and schooled her fury-twisted expression back to placidity, even shooting Elliot an apologetic glance.

“Sorry. I came here to tell you not to kill yourself, and instead I end up rambling about my own life story. That was shitty of me.”

“No.” It just slipped out, to both his and her surprise. He pressed on. “No, I get what you’re trying to say. And I…I appreciate it. Thanks.” 

It wasn’t nearly the acknowledgement she deserved; he hadn’t even scratched the surface of what he really wanted to say to her, not knowing how to express his gratitude, but she just accepted it silently.

A few minutes of comfortable silence passed between them in which the girl finished the rest of her tea, which had long gone cold, and Elliot half-heartedly stirred his, contemplating as he gazed into the hypnotically swirling dark liquid. He was yanked out of his reverie as the girl stood up abruptly, stretching her arms above her head and yawning like a cat. She offered him a warm smile when he stood as well, but he caught the glimpse of dread in her face as she turned towards the door.

“This has been nice,” she said, walking over to it slowly, dragging her feet. “Thank you for the tea.” 

(Thank you for listening.)

She cast a semi-wistful glance around the room, but then Elliot saw her take a breath and straighten up suddenly, as if steeling herself, and she swung the door open in a purposeful gesture. The corner of her mouth quirked up in a brave smile as she met his gaze. As she turned to leave, he somehow felt that if he knocked on his chest, it would make a hollow sound.  
Just as abruptly, though, she turned back to him.

“You know, if it is true that you don’t have anyone you think cares—which it isn’t—you can know for sure that I’d be sad. If something were to happen to you. I’d care.” 

Her face was exquisitely open, vulnerable as she said this, and Elliot could see over her walls, just for a split second, before she stepped over the threshold.

“Wait.”

She looked at him over her shoulder again, expectant. He opened his mouth, determined to say something of worth. (Thank you.)

“I…I think I have a spare mattress somewhere,” was what came out instead. “It could…I could make space for it. It would fit.”  
As he stuttered, he watched the understanding grow on the girl’s face like the first faint flush of dawn, mixed with the first wispy cloud of caution. Her eyes grew wide.

“Is that…wouldn’t there be some legal stuff associated with…?”

“It’s a temporary arrangement,” he said quickly. “Maybe just for tonight. You…uh…you were right. It is pretty cold outside.”

And the look she gave him, the smile that illuminated her face and washed away the barriers as easily as the tide washes away a carefully constructed sandcastle, assured him a thousand times over that this was better than any eloquent speech on his behalf. For a moment, Elliot thought she was actually going to hug him and he tensed automatically. But instead a little burst of delirious, almost hysterical laughter tugged itself from her chest and she spread her arms and twirled giddily across the shabby carpet like it was the floor of a marble palace and she’d been offered the world. 

Watching her he felt…warm. (Relieved? Why do I feel relieved?)

“You’re relieved because you can see there’s still a bit of a child in her yet.”

An all-too-familiar voice answered his unspoken question and he almost whirled to face the scruffy man in his peripheral vision. But he remembered just in time, and stayed put, keeping his eyes on the girl. 

(And where the fuck were you when I was on that sill?)

“I was there. Trust me, kiddo. I just knew someone better was about to come along.”

Elliot scraped his teeth along his bottom lip in response, but his father—Mr Robot—himself—whatever he was put a firm hand on his shoulder and its warmth felt real as anything. But unlike other times, this almost felt comforting.

“You did good, kid,” he said approvingly, and then he was gone.

Elliot felt his stiff shoulders relax as the girl approached him, the huge grin still on her face, not believing her luck. Seeing it, he decided he didn’t care whether she was real or not. She was real enough to him.


End file.
